The United Nations seeks to ensure that only individuals with the highest standards of integrity, competence and efficiency are hired. In particular, it is critical for the integrity of the UN to ensure that individuals who have previously engaged in sexual exploitation and abuse while in the service of UN operations do not get rehired.

The Conduct and Discipline Unit (CDU), in collaboration with various other UN offices and entities, conducts vetting of candidates for recruitment against records of prior misconduct while in the service of a UN operation. These records are kept in the confidential Misconduct Tracking System (MTS), managed by CDU.

Processes for vetting have been gradually expanded to cover more categories of personnel. Currently, all international and national civilian personnel, UN Volunteers, individual contractors and consultants, members of formed police units, individual military and police officers and other government-provided personnel, such as justice and corrections officers, are vetted before they are hired and/or deployed. Military contingent members are vetted as soon as they arrive in the mission area, at which time a final list of names is available. In addition, troop- and police-contributing countries are required to certify upon deployment or rotation of personnel that no individual being deployed or rotated has committed, or been alleged to have committed, violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, or been repatriated on disciplinary grounds and barred from participation in future UN operations.

CDU informs the hiring offices if records show that an individual has been the subject of disciplinary action, or in the case of uniformed personnel, if they have been repatriated on disciplinary grounds and barred from future deployment, as a result of misconduct committed while in the service of a UN operation.